


Showmanship

by Brosedshield



Series: MCU Character Studies [6]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Incredible Hulk - All Media Types
Genre: Archery, Circus, Circus Performer Clint Barton, Clint Barton Needs a Hug, Engineering, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, POV Outsider, Parent-Child Relationship, Past Child Abuse, Performance Art, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Red Room, Steve Rogers Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-31
Updated: 2016-08-02
Packaged: 2018-07-28 08:59:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7634056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brosedshield/pseuds/Brosedshield
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts” - As You Like It, Shakespeare.</p><p>Most of the Avengers have a face that appears just before the cameras. This is where they learned the art (engineering, habits) of showmanship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Steve Rogers - Captain America (the Dancing Monkey)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Merely stating a truth isn't enough. The truth has to be made vivid, interesting, dramatic. You have to use showmanship." -- Dale Carnegie

“Think Rogers will ever remember his fucking lines?” Jack grumbles.

“Give the kid a break,” Stan snaps. “It’s only been a couple of weeks.”

It’s been a week and a half, they’re on their sixth city, and Rogers still can’t remember his lines.

“That clodhead is still reading off that fucking shield,” Jack says.

“He almost actually hit Ernie on Wednesday,” Petey pitches in.

Stan, in the middle of a long drag of his cigarette, coughs. “If he’d have hit Ernie, Hitler wouldn’t be doing matinees.”

“I said ‘almost’!”.

The guys who managed set-up and the heavy lifting for the bond sales show touring the continental United States generally restrict their bitching about the “star” of the show to smoke breaks, knowing that Rogers won’t ever join them. The guy claims he had asthma as a kid, can’t handle the smoke, but Stan privately doubts any of the guys believe a word of it. The Rogers kid is built like a brick shithouse and (they realized last week) can bench press any of the girls without breaking a sweat. Maybe any of the guys too. It’s hard to imagine him struggling at anything, much less at catching his breath. Well, outside of actually remembering his damn lines, and putting a little emotion into them.

So what if Rogers doesn't want to be there? He should fucking join the club.

“He’s trying,” Stan says, and takes another drag. Truth is, Rogers gets a little more confidence, a little more swagger, every time they do a show. Maybe by the end of the tour he’ll actually be able to fake-punch Ernie without looking awkward and bored out of his skull.

Maybe. 

Stan isn't taking bets, necessarily, but he's hoping. Otherwise it's going to be a fucking long tour.

~*~

When Bucky sees Steve give a speech for the first time, he figures it has something to do with the serum. After all, Erskine’s formula was meant to enhance every aspect of the person (hell knows what Zola’s might do), and Stevie always could make a statement if he felt strongly enough about something.

Then Steve tells him about the bond sales show, and Bucky laughs and laughs. As soon as the laughter eases up he imagines Stevie, in this brand new body, strutting around a stage in the same bright blue spandex he rescued most of the 107th in, and Bucky breaks down again.

“It’s not that funny,” Steve grumbles.

“It is where I’m sitting,” Bucky says. “Ten percent bump in bond sales. I can see that. I mean, Jesus, I’m glad for the guns but seriously, Rogers?”

Steve grins, just a quirk of his mouth, but it’s the same fond and sarcastic expression that Bucky’s seen forever. It’s 100 percent Steve. “You know, I knocked out Adolf Hitler over 200 times.”

That sets Bucky off again. It’s good to know, that in spite of the shiny new body, the muscles, the speed, hell, the way Stevie learns now (he’s always been smart, but this is something else, the way he picks up intel or languages, or strategies that he's only just encountered) that it was only months of practice that made him comfortable in front of crowds. He's finally learned, at least a little, hot to project all that personality that’s he’s never quite been able to fit into his undersized frame. 

He’s Captain America now, but he’s still just Steve Rogers under the skin. And Bucky would follow Steve Rogers into hell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THIS IS ACTUALLY FINISHED. Or as finished as it's going to be. I have four scenes (and one snippet and one small section of meta) for each of the original six Avengers AND THEY SHALL ALL BE POSTED BECAUSE THEY ARE ACTUALLY ALL FINISHED.
> 
> Going to go through a couple Chapters per day. I reserve the right to make edits in the future, and please feel free to let me know if there are HORRIFIC SPELLING AND GRAMMAR errors. Un-beta'd.
> 
> Quotes at the beginning of each Chapter are from...Googling the definition of Showmanship to be sure that I used it right and then stumbling upon a whole bunch of quotes that I liked.
> 
> Tags will be updates with each Chapter/Character.


	2. Clint Barton - The Amazing Hawkeye

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "The secret of showmanship consists not of what you really do, but what the mystery-loving public thinks you do."--Harry Houdini

Trickshot watches Clint practice. Sometimes it’s about bitching about his form, or his stance, or the way he can’t usually manage more than a half-smirk while he’s shooting (“Jesus Christ, kid, you think the rubes are going to applaud your ugly mug if you keep glaring like that?”). Clint’s used to it, and it’s better than when Trick beats the shit out of him for any of those things. So when Trickshot says, “Look at me when I’m fucking talking to you,” in the middle of his last shot, Clint does. He transforms the turn into just another piece of his draw, his release. From his peripheral vision, he sees the arrow fly and bury itself in the middle of the target with its fellows.

Trickshot’s face goes blank, and that it turns calculating. “Kid,” he says. “Did you just make a fucking bullseye without looking at the target?”

Clint shuffles. It’s hard to tell sometimes with Trick what’s honest interest, and what’s a set-up for getting the shit beat out of him. “Yeah?”

“Can you do it again?”

Clint thinks for a second. What he will, someday, try to explain to Coulson over drinks after a particularly bad op, is that he’s not really NOT looking at the target. His famed eyesight isn’t just about distance, colors, and the math behind making an almost impossible shot. Even his peripheral vision is better than most people’s. But, in this moment when he’s barely in his teens and in way over his head, he doesn’t have those words.

“Yeah, Trick,” he says. “I can do it again.”

“During a show?”

“Sure.”

“Well, do that then,” Trickshot says. “Every chance you get. The townies are gonna eat that the fuck up. Try that again, and try to clean up your goddamned stance.”

Trickshot was right about the crowds loving it, and it was just like everything else in the circus. Generally, you had to make the hard stuff look easy, and the easy stuff look hard, and the rubes couldn’t fucking tell one from the other if you did it right.

Maybe Clint never got the hang of putting on a good show (he earned his “Amazing Hawkeye” title through his marksmanship, not his stage presence) but he never lost the habit of looking away on a shot.

Maybe the criminal underworld wasn’t the same kind of rubes that had come to Carson’s circus, but there were certain advantages to unnerving the competition with a perfect shot, while you stared, not at the current target, but direction at the next one (right between the eyes).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh gosh. The things I don't actually know about comics canon could fill...a whole lot of comic books. But, this is my tiny headcanon on Clint. And this fella (and his tendency to NOT LOOK AT THE TARGET which is as illogical as it is cool) is probably the whole reason for this fic.


	3. Natasha Romanoff - The Black Widow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I will wear my heart upon my sleeve for daws to peck at; I am not what I am." -- Iago, Othello, Shakespeare.

A line of pale pre-teen girls, slender as dancers, blank-faced as dolls, stand before the trainers.

“You are sex incarnate,” says the Matron. Her voice cuts like a whip through the bare, cold room, her accent a hint of leaves on an autumn wind. “You both repel and attract. Men — perhaps women, but most likely men — will fear you and seek to dominate you. You must have a hint of that vulnerability. You are the pretty snake. Is she poison? Is she breakable? He will not know until he has you wrapped in his hands, your fangs in his wrist. Walk.”

The line of girls become something else. In the real world, where these weapons, tools, will be applied to deadly effect, makeup and wardrobe and weaponry will come into effect to aid the illusion — no, the transformation —but there is no place for assistance here, no crutch that these Widows may carry into all the places they will have to go. In this moment, they have nothing but stance, gait, expression, person.

They glide across the room. Deadly. Beautiful. Attractive in a way that their incompletely-formed bodies should not be.

Some (the weakest) cannot help but dart glances toward the Matron, toward the other trainers, toward the other girls. Even as they walk like a panther they are nervous, striving to gain insights, tips, something that will give them the edge and make them complete. That very attempt leaves holes in the illusion.

Others look neither to the right nor the left, except to assess a threat, to see who is watching. This part of the persona, and the Matron makes personal note of who they are. Those who not only ape the creature they were instructed to become, but truly become it.

“Stop,” she says.

Some stop and fall out of character as quickly as they moved into it. Others hold onto the impression. And some ease out of it slowly before she can once again see the empty doll, the raw clay they are fashioning again and again into the perfect skeleton key for any lock.

“You are a mouse,” the Matron says. “Grey and pale. No one sees you. To woman you are a tool and to men you are a furniture he will not see unless he trips upon it. Where you walk you barely whisper and when someone hears they think ‘What mouse could that be? I shall set traps’. They will not see you as a threat to their secrets, nor watch you hands too closely when you give them coffee laced with death. You are nothing. Walk.”

The girls shuffled forward. Some are shrinking things that would go unnoticed in almost any office the world, startling at shadows. Others are merely trying. Once again, the Matron takes notes.

Later, she and the trainers will discuss. It is too soon to tell, too soon to cull, but they require versatile and moldable weapons. There is no use keeping ones that cannot truly become what the Red Room needs them to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obviously slightly different. I find the idea of Red Room training fascinating and disturbing in equal measure, and at least partially because we see the effect without really knowing the process.


	4. Bruce Banner - Harmless

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it." -- Milton Friedman

If Bruce Banner, would like to appear as anything in particular, it would be harmless. He isn’t, but it’s an illusion he’ll hold come hell and high water.

(Tony can tell him to “strut” all he’d like, and sure, maybe Bruce will snark back at him and the rest of the team, but that’s really all he feels comfortable with).

When there’s a threat, the Hulk will come out, and Bruce can’t control that part of himself, can’t maintain that particular illusion. But he’ll try. 

(Bruce Banner was never harmless. But that’s something he probably hasn’t realized himself).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gosh, the end notes are going to be longer that this Chapter.
> 
> That's because, of all the Avengers, I see Bruce as the one that doesn't actually have a front he presents, a persona that he embraces when presented with challenges/the public eye. Obviously, there is the Hulk, but that's less a choice Bruce makes about how he is perceived (or, like with Clint, a habit left over from when he actually was a performer) than a force of nature, a response to a threat. Bruce himself tries to hide, to pull that threat into his skin so that it can't seep out. That is not at all what I think of as "showmanship" but I didn't want to just NOT include Bruce when discussing this topic. Heck, I'm including Thor (and it still waits to be seen whether you guys are going to get an actual story-snipped for Thor, or just meta) so I wanted to have at least a mention of everyone. And I have a lot of Bruce feels that I should really FINISH ADDRESSING in that Other Fic. 
> 
> Any thoughts on these character moment? Agree, disagree, mad typos everywhere? I'd love to hear about it!
> 
> (okay, so I maybe I wouldn't LOVE to hear about the typos, but I'm sure they're there, so may as well mention them, eh?)


	5. Thor - Prince of Asgard

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Personality is essential. It is in every work of art. When someone walks on stage for a performance and has charisma, everyone is convinced that he has personality. I find that charisma is merely a form of showmanship. Movie stars usually have it. A politician has to have it." -Lukas Foss

The young Prince Thor, like many young men born to power, made his mistakes. He could be quick to anger at times, but most of the young and old nobles admitted that this was just the way of young men. And my, how the boy could stand straight and declare what he believed to be right, and fight for it! What was an occasional show of temper after that?

Indeed, when the young Thor was on the combat field, or toasting his battle triumphs with his friends, or making promises about the worlds he, they, would conquer when he was king, there was much of his father in him. The young Prince Thor, like Odin the All-Father before him, knew how to speak and have people listen. It delighted those who he paid attention to, and left others drooping, as flowers without the sun.

(In private, Thor was perhaps quieter, and not as good about hiding his temper. The Lady Frigga watched all of this, and the smile he could put on when he knew that he had broken something that would cost dearly to be repaired, or perhaps said words that would not easily be forgiven. Truly, both aspects of her son were essentially him, but, like his father before him, he knew almost by instinct which ones to show and which ones to hide. She would have worried less, if so many in the Asgardian court did not draw such a contrast between Thor and Loki.

Truly, Frigga saw much of Odin in the clever mind, words, and actions of her second son, even if the bloodlines weren’t there. It was unfortunate, though, that Loki lacked the sheer golden charisma of Thor. Prince Loki was not, she thought, a vine that thrived in shadows, but one that would seek and seek until it had found light.

Someday her sons would find a balance that allowed them both to thrive, but Frigga wasn’t certain what that day would look like, or when it would come. She simply knew that it had to, or they would tear each other apart seeking to be the best princes they knew how to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thor is not my strongest character, and you almost got nothing but straight-up meta on this, but eventually (aka, tonight) I decided that that wasn't what you signed up for. I'm not sure that this tiny snipped is much of a balance. I really wanted to write tiny SCENES for everyone, but...this is what was in my head.
> 
> I feel that if Thor was as golden and perfect as he is sometimes portrayed, Loki would not have been as good at hiding behind things toward the beginning of the first movie when Thor was raging at not getting his way. But I see Thor as VERY CONVINCING when he tries to be, and that seems at times to be a learned behavior.
> 
> Again, my grasp of Thor as someone I can write about is relatively week. If you have thoughts/comments/criticisms, please let me know!


	6. Tony Stark - Genius, Billionaire, Playboy, Philanthropist

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I wonder now whether inner coldness and desolation may not be the pre-condition for making the world believe, by a kind of fraudulent showmanship, that one's own wretched heart is still aglow." -W. G. Sebald

It’s all about controlling spin, and whatever you might say about Tony Stark, he knows his weapons.

Tony knew how to fire every gun Stark Industries could build, and he’s flown planes, (though he’ll admit he was never much of a pilot, at least not compared to Rhodey, not before the suit), because it’s all about the user experience. You can’t have a hand-held anti-tank weapon that will take your shoulder off, or a grenade with a blast radius larger than a man can reasonably throw (at least not if you want repeat customers) and the best way to know if a weapon will actually work in the hands you’ve designed it for is to take a spin yourself.

Like the suit, Tony Stark’s personal combination of snark, brilliance, and assholery isn’t a weapon that he ever plans to share, but it does its job most of the time.

If you can’t stop folks shooting at you, at least you can design a plane that can take the hits and keep on flying.

It’s a work in progress, of course, and (like tinkering with anything mechanical in touching distance) it’s almost instinctive. You pump up the things that that you don’t mind them hitting (girls, and guys, and that one time in Reno), and you brag hard about the bits you think they’ll enjoy news-bite-ing (hello, Stark Expo and burning the Ten Rings to the ground), and you build up heavy artillery for the vulnerable spots that can’t take too many hits (when he’s honest and low, Tony figures he focused so hard on charities and green energy even before Afghanistan because there are only so many times you can be called the Merchant of Death before something important breaks).

Most of the time Tony is also imitating the Howard Stark of the newsreels. Not just because it’s an nice nod to history and legacy, but because he never knew anyone as hard to rattle as his Dad. He’s never known anyone who could not-give-a-fuck for the paparazzi quite so hard. Even when Dad was telling Tony to shape the fuck up, or posing in front of the cameras (looking pleased and fatherly as though they had not been screaming at each other ten minutes before) Tony never really saw a shot hit home.

In many ways, wearing the Iron Man armor is a hell of a lot easier for Tony than just being Tony Stark. There's fewer soft spots and they're easier to watch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading my little character piece! I hope you enjoyed and let me know if any piece struck you particularly, for good or ill!


End file.
